


You simply want me to stay forever, right?

by Hawkbringer



Series: Hawkbringer's Greatest Hits [1]
Category: Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (Video Game)
Genre: Drinking, F/M, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Happy Ending, Heterosexuality, Marriage Proposal, Set early game, Short & Sweet, Teacher-Student Relationship, a rarity for me, no marriage, spoiler free, staying friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23481190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkbringer/pseuds/Hawkbringer
Summary: Yu Kan the beloved teacher from Goldpaw, bonds with Munokhoi, the quiet, plant-loving sky pirate from Cloudcoil Canyon. She teaches him how to raise plants and how to read, and he one day can't stand it anymore and asks her to marry him. She has gotten marriage proposals from her students before, so she is well-equipped to let him down gently.
Relationships: Munokhoi/Yu Kan
Series: Hawkbringer's Greatest Hits [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1357354





	You simply want me to stay forever, right?

**Author's Note:**

> As I played NNK2 through the first time for myself, I made copious notes on the characters in Evermore and their interactions and core skills, so the following occured:
> 
> Yu Kan is meant for the market garden, which we don't have yet, and the Farm is empty since I had Munokhoi go help Martha at the Higgelry, and she's the last to need a spot. Oh, wait, research is done at the Higgelry, I can send Munokhoi back over to the farm. 
> 
> I'm sure Yu Kan would be a good soothing presence for him, the poor man is so jittery. 
> 
> Perhaps his stutter goes away completely when surrounded by plants! She'd be very good at praising and teaching him and stuff, ya know? Also pretty cute fanart, but it kind of seems more intimate, like, it'd be a better fic. Less flashy than Yung Mein and Tani dramatically clashing spears in mid-air. 
> 
> He and Yu Kan would be crouched over small plants, her voice quiet, him unable to look at her, coaxed over many days if not weeks to open up, because she's /safe/. More like a therapist than anything else. She might convince him that plants grow better when talked to, and HEY HE WANTED TO LEARN TO READ, SHE CAN TEACH HIM THAT.

One day, she swishes in, and he doesn't hear her at first. The wind in that corner of Evermore is loud, because it's nearer to the wilds of the mid-plain, most of the city-fortress is situated near to the coast, and they also have the river running nearby. It's easy to not hear her walking up, she walks softly, carefully, the way people with small pets or children do, to avoid stepping on tiny toes. 

So he doesn't hear her when she approaches and she stands just a few feet back, hair straying from her ponytail in the wind, listens to him recount his childhood, his days of freedom as a pirate, freedom he didn't want, not really, he'd much rather have roots and snuggle into the ground like you, little plants. He segues into baby-talk praise for the little shoots, carefully sprinkling the salt to keep the slugs away, up and down the rows, and as he stands up and makes to walk away, she clears her throat. 

He jumps, nearly falls over trying to catch his balance while not stepping on any of the plants, and asks, stutters, how long has she been standing there. She simply says, long enough. Then she walks forward and takes both his hands in hers and tells him some nice things about how well he's doing and how happy everyone is that he's doing what he loves, that he deserves their praise and it's all turned out all right, even after his rocky start. 

He bows his teary-eyed head and sucks a deep breath in, then drops to one knee and asks her to marry him with the most heartfelt expression she's ever seen on one of her students. 

She smiles, and shakes her head, and puts a hand on his cheek, and goes into her customary spiel about how she cannot marry her students, and that's not what they actually want from her anyway, they just want her to stay around forever. 

"You know better than most of the men who have asked for my hand in the past, Munokhoi, that lives do not last forever, it is what we do with them that matters. I will not marry you - indeed, I may not ever marry - but I will be your friend, your teacher, for as long as fate allows me to stay beside you, to stay here in lovely Evermore, where everyone's dreams can come true." He was already crying, and he's still crying now, gazing up at her silently and not moving a muscle. 

She smiles beautifically again, and lets her hand fall away from his face. He lets out the tiniest sigh and that seems to break the spell and he stands back up. Swallowing repeatedly and rubbing at his eyes, he asks a shaky question about the wilting arrowhead carrots, and she walks with him to go and have a look. 

***

He makes an effort, and so does she, to keep things just as they were, to speak only of the vegetables and their customers and the other citizens that come in day by day. He still looks at her with sad eyes sometimes, but that happens less and less as time goes on. 

He gets roaring drunk one night with the other sky pirates, drunk enough that he speaks loudly for once in his life, telling the whole sordid tale and bawling to the skies. After the first several parties wrecked the Explorer's Guild, (it was totally Khunbish's fault, Chingis may stink to high heaven but he's quite gentle-handed) it is by Roland's order that they have to return to Cloudcoil Canyon to host these drunken, revelrous nights. Munokhoi barley remembers what month it is when he wakes up, surprised that Khunbish and Chingis seem to be taking the role of Boss in the clean-up, and there are more women around than he remembers usually coming to these things. 

(The gender gap shrank considerably once over half the pirates left for Evermore, since it was mostly men before, and mostly men left. And of course the women kept holding the monthly revels despite their absence, so the men coming up from Evermore kind of had to just accept that screaming-drunk half-naked women, that they'd spent years if not decades basically ignoring, were now running the show.) The long and short of it was, when they all traipsed back to Evermore after that rough weekend, fighting a few dirty bandits along the way, stories of Munokhoi's bard-like story-telling qualities and his epic heartbreak had spread among the whole group, and he was much more respected by the time he came back, even though he hadn't suddenly gotten better at fighting or flying or even talking all that well. 

He shares the good news with Yu Kan, or she shares it with him, having heard it around town, but it isn't long until Roland and Evan call everyone to the throne room for a huge town meeting, announcing the upgrading of the castle now that they have enough hands on deck. Yu Kan will be getting her own market garden and she eagerly accepts, chatting with Niall and Persha about how to handle a multi-person operation, since they have been de-facto owner of their locales for months now.

The following month is hard on Munokhoi, after the usual routine of research and gathering is interrupted for the massive construction project, since he doesn't see her nearly as much anymore, but Tani eventually kicks him in the shins and tells him to go down to the lessons she holds in the new giant town square.

There, he becomes her student again, and even starts teaching the littler ones to read. She comes to treat him like a colleague, a co-teacher, and when he takes her hand next, to thank her for trusting him as a colleague (enough to go fetch down a kid who had climbed up a tree in anguish), she folds her hand around his and nods decisively. Even the children who know about 'love' look at them together and congratulate Munokhoi on finally making a friend. He glances from their cheering faces to her laughing one and thinks it's really true. This really was what he wanted all along. He wipes at one eye with his free hand, weeping tears of joy for the first time in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> Written originally in the bright midday, 23rd of August 2018. 
> 
> I left my future self notes to check on the specifics of Evermore's buildings and size at level 2, but I did not do that. :) So it's mostly accurate, I think! (I haven't actually finished my first personal playthrough of the game... Took too many notes and burned out my writing-fingers.)


End file.
